Organizations worldwide rely on facsimile transmission of documents for immediate, reliable, and cost effective exchange of universally compatible documents. Currently, with an installed base of over 75 million facsimile machines worldwide, every business is expected to have at least one number for use over telephone lines for the facsimile transmission of documents. Additionally, many homes now have a facsimile machine or a personal computer having facsimile transmission capability.
According to a 1999 Pitney Bowes FAX Usage and Technology Study, conducted by the Gallup Organization, the usage of facsimile transmission is growing, and it is still dominant as the method of choice for sending documents and messages to customers and vendors. The survey also found that large and mid-size company employees use facsimile transmission for documents more than any other method of communications, regardless of document type.
The traditional facsimile transmission solution for documents of “having my FAX dial your FAX” worked well when the number of facsimile machines was somewhat limited. However, this paradigm began to fail when the number of people sending and receiving facsimile transmission of documents started to explode. One problem is that facsimile machines can be expensive and may not be totally reliable. Also, it is sometimes not cost effective to keep a facsimile machine constantly tying up a telephone line. This current system does not work properly all the time in today's demanding around-the-clock environment. One solution has been to utilize servers for facsimile transmission that receive documents sent by facsimile transmission and that route them to the desired recipient. Because these servers for facsimile transmission can support large numbers of employees, they can be made more reliable.
However, this solution did not address another problem that has arisen in this business world that has become ever more dependent on facsimile transmission of documents, and that is that many people need to be able to retrieve documents sent by facsimile transmission from locations other than their workplace. For example, it is advantageous for an employee to be able to retrieve a document transmitted by facsimile transmission while traveling and at remote locations.
One solution to this has been the use of facsimile machines at hotels. However, there is little, if any, security provided, and the sender often does not know whether or not the recipient ever received a document transmitted by facsimile transmission, or, alternatively, whether a document transmitted by facsimile transmission was discarded at the remote location before delivery to the recipient. Indeed, one typically has no idea when receiving a document transmitted by facsimile transmission at a remote location how many other people have seen the document before it is delivered.
A somewhat better solution, at least in some situations, is to use a public facsimile machine to receive documents transmitted by facsimile transmission. However, this requires that both the sender and the recipient of the document coordinate the transmission and receipt of the document, which is often an unacceptable in today's global economy.
Several companies have addressed this problem by providing storage servers for the facsimile transmission of documents that receive such documents destined for a particular person. Then, a person dials into a server for facsimile transmission of documents identifying himself to receive documents which are downloaded to any desired facsimile machine. Some current products of this type are Public Fax by Action FAX (www.actionfax.com) and FaxCube (www.faxcube.com). The identification is done for example by keying in a PIN number using the telephone keypad of the facsimile machine.
Unfortunately, this solution has both security and confidentiality problems. In particular, anyone with the correct PIN number can download all the documents sent to an individual by facsimile transmission of that PIN number. It would thus be advantageous to be able to allow a remote user to securely identify and locate himself and then remotely receive any documents sent by facsimile transmission that have been staged for him using a server for facsimile transmissions.